How Does a Sound Sensor Work?
Both humans and machines use sound sensors to gather information from sound waves.Copyright (left) 2011 baholfor, Wikimedia Commons; (middle) 2012 Chittka L, Brockmann, Wikimedia Commons; (right) 2004 Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 USA. All rights reserved.
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Students learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. They look at the hearing process—sound waves converted to electrical signals sent to the brain—through human ear anatomy as well as sound sensors. A mini-activity, which uses LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT intelligent bricks and sound sensors gives students a chance to experiment with the sound sensors in preparation for the associated activity involving the sound sensors and taskbots. A PowerPoint® presentation explains stimulus-to-response pathways, sensor fundamentals, the unit of decibels, and details about the LEGO sound sensor, including how readings are displayed and its three modes of programming sound input. Students take pre/post quizzes and watch a short online video. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make decisions to via programming.
Sound sensors—called auditory sensors by engineers—are used in many devices that we use every day. The stimulus-to-response pathways seen in electronic sound sensor operation mimics the human body process that involves our ears and signal transmission to the brain. Microphones are the sound sensors used in phones, computers, baby monitors and music systems like karoke machines. The use of sensors has exploded into the design of uncountable every day tools, equipment, appliances and devices.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Describe how sound sensors work.
- Compare the sound sensor to the human ear.
- Program the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot with the sound sensor
- Provide a basic explanation of how sensors are integrated into robots via careful programming.